6 - Advising the King: Kingship, Bishops and Saints in the Works of William of Malmesbury

Summary

Throughout the medieval West, saints and bishops offered crucial advice and fierce admonition to the rulers of political communities. The type of the forceful and reprimanding cleric, however, has so far mostly been studied with reference to the early Middle Ages, at least when compared with his successors in twelfth-century England. Indeed, even William of Malmesbury's views on kingship have begun to be explored only fairly recently. Our understanding has been reshaped by the scholarship of Sverre Bagge, John Gillingham, Paul Hayward, Bjorn Weiler and, especially, that of Sigbjorn Sonnesyn. As a direct consequence of their efforts, far greater attention is now paid to the moral, ethical and theological dimensions of William's texts. When defining the virtuous exercise of royal power, William emphasised the connection between outward action and inner disposition, and expressed Augustinian and early medieval assumptions about power in the language of classical antiquity. To maintain a virtuous character, however, kings needed the Church. Both Weiler and Sonnesyn have drawn attention to the fact that all the outstanding kings in the Gesta Regum had powerful clerical advisors. This paper builds upon their remarks by exploring further interactions between kings, bishops and saints in William's writings. In particular, it extends the discussion to texts other than the Gesta Regum, principally to its monumental twin, the Gesta Pontificum, which has always received less scholarly attention. Although the succession of kings and the development of a nation were common historical frameworks through which contemporaries reflected upon the progress of a moral community, they were not the only approaches to the past available to twelfth-century writers. How did William depict kings known to him from texts with rather different structures and intended audiences? How far did he draw upon an insular, as much as a classical and patristic, inheritance? With these questions in mind, this chapter argues that the notion of clerical oversight was of fundamental importance to William's historical and political vision. He regarded it as essential to the well-being of the realm. His normative expectations of secular and ecclesiastical power were the product of a political culture rooted in early medieval traditions and practices. The following will proceed in three steps. I begin with William's depictions of one of his exemplars of clerical oversight: St Dunstan. The historian explored the relationship between the archbishop and the various rulers he served in considerable depth.